1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a device and method for holding a plurality of optical fibers in a bundled state.
2. Description of the Related Art
One prior art device for holding a bundle of plural optical fibers has a bore extending through a member such as a connector for holding a bundle of optical fibers bonded and fixed to each other with adhesive applied to a portion of each optical fiber to be bonded to other optical fibers by allowing the bundle to be inserted therethrough.
With such a device, adhesive must be applied to optical fibers one by one and, hence, the operation of forming a single optical fiber bundle is very troublesome and inconvenient. The use of adhesive enables adjacent optical fibers to be fixed to each other relatively tightly in a certain region by virtue of capillarity occurring in clearances defined between optical fibers. The prior art device, however, requires that adhesive be applied to optical fibers one by one as described above, which results in use of a larger amount of adhesive than necessary. Consequently, capillarity occurs in a wider region, causing the flexibility essential to the optical fiber bundle to be impaired, which makes it difficult to suitably apply the optical fiber bundle to different use conditions.
The present invention, which has been made in view of the foregoing problem, intends to provide an optical fiber bolder and an optical fiber holding method, which are capable of ensuring a proper holding state without impairing the flexibility of an optical fiber bundle.